52 Shot, 8 Dead and Mayor Daley Still Resists Self-Defense

BELLEVUE, Wash., June 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Fifty-two people shot, eight of them fatally in a single Chicago weekend, yet Mayor Richard Daley appears poised to go down screaming in his opposition to the Second Amendment Foundation's lawsuit to overturn his city's handgun ban.

The U.S. Supreme Court could rule any day on the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, filed by SAF, the Illinois State Rifle Association and four Chicago residents. That ruling will likely strike down the handgun ban, thus opening the door to legal self-defense by Windy City residents.

"Chicago has become a slaughterhouse," said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, "where defenseless victims are terrorized by armed thugs who have taken full advantage of an unarmed populace. Daley and his predecessors who perpetuated this ban are wading knee-deep in the blood of hundreds of crime victims who should have had the means to defend themselves.

"Year after year the statistics have piled up," he continued, "yet Mayor Daley has stubbornly defended the city's ban. While he has luxuriated at his vacation home with the safety of armed bodyguards, the bodies of Chicago crime victims have stacked up like cordwood.

"Within days," Gottlieb observed, "we should have a ruling from the Supreme Court that puts an end to this insanity, and gives the citizens of Chicago back their right to defend themselves. Daley thinks his constituents should be content to call 911 and wait for help to arrive while they're being shot, stabbed, raped, robbed or beaten. Those crimes happen fast, and when seconds count, Chicago police are minutes away.

"We took Daley to court because we trust his citizens more than he does with their self-defense rights," Gottlieb concluded. "Chicago residents have endured the terror of public disarmament for almost three decades, and all they have to show for it is a body count. Mayor Daley should be ashamed."

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, the Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.